DWP contractors have begun employing pharmacists and speech and language therapists to carry out assessments for personal independence payment (PIP) and/or the work capability assessment (WCA).
Earlier this month we revealed that a report which the DWP had kept hidden for over three years showed that over half of all PIP/WCA assessors leave within their first year.
The report suggested that the DWP consider using midwives and pharmacists to make up some of the shortfall.
We said that we would not be surprised to see trials of this suggestion begin before the year is out.
In reality, a Freedom of Information request by Benefits and Work has shown that assessment companies are already pharmacists to carry out assessments.
The table below gives the number of each type of health assessors employed by private contractors in October 2025. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10 and an asterisk denotes fewer than ten – but more than zero.
The table shows that the vast majority of assessors are nurses, though the DWP say that the companies do not tell them the proportion of different types of nurses, for example specialist mental health nurses, they employ.
But the figures make clear that both Capita and Serco employ around 20 pharmacists and that, in addition, Capita employ a very small number of speech and language therapists.
The figures do not say whether these staff are employed to carry out PIP assessments or WCAs or both. But given that the report detailed above stated that paramedics were only employed to do PIP assessments, this may well be the case for pharmacists and speech therapists too. (We are making further enquiries).
There is no doubt that both professions are registered healthcare professionals. But then, according to the Health and Care Professions Council, so are:
- Art therapists
- Chiropodists
- Dietitians
- Hearing aid dispensers
As recruitment problems persist for the assessment companies, what is the likelihood that they will turn to some of these other, very narrowly specialised, professions for staff?
There were almost 794,000 registered nurses in the UK at September 2025. The fact that assessment companies are having to turn to pharmacists and speech therapists to fill vacancies, says a great deal about the reputation and nature of the work these companies undertake.
And, for claimants being assessed by an increasingly wide, and not necessarily appropriate range of healthcare professionals, the PIP and WCA decision making process must seem ever more of a matter of chance rather than law.
